Global Perception Of Turkey Worsened By Corruption

SEVGİ AKARÇEŞME / ISTANBUL
As Turkey commemorates the first anniversary of the massive corruption investigations that were revealed on Dec. 17 and 25 of last year, restrictions on media coverage of anything that would remind the public of the graft allegations are increasing and the image of the country has worsened, particularly in the Western world, due to the failure to conduct an open and free investigation process.
In the most recent Corruption Perception Index (CPI) announced by Transparency International (TI) in December, Turkey had the largest decrease in transparency, falling five points, and putting it behind countries such as Angola, China, Malawi and Rwanda. Turkey's score on a scale from 1 to 100, where 1 is the most corrupt, fell from 50 to 45 in just one year. The CPI measured the perceived level of public sector corruption in 175 countries around the world. Data from several international organizations specializing in governance and business climate analysis were taken into account while calculating the scores. The sources included the "Bertelsmann Stiftung Sustainable Governance Indicators 2014," the "Bertelsmann Stiftung Transformation Index 2014," the "IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook 2014," the "Political Risk Services International Country Risk Guide 2014," the "World Economic Forum Executive Opinion Survey (EOS) 2014," the "World Justice Project Rule of Law Index 2014," "Economist Intelligence Unit Country Risk Ratings 2014” and "Global Insight Country Risk Ratings 2014."
In addition to unprecedented purges of the police force and the judiciary following the biggest corruption investigations in Turkey's history became public in December of last year, the corruption issue has also left its mark on many other areas from media freedoms to freedom of assembly, since the government has taken every -- often anti-democratic -- measure possible to avoid even talking about corruption.
Evaluating Turkey's corruption score shortly ahead of the anniversary of the investigations revealed on Dec. 17 and 25, TI Regional Coordinator for Southeastern Europe Cornelia Abel commented on the handling of the corruption investigations in Turkey, saying that given the obstructions to due process in the pursuit of the corruption allegations, it seems that democracy is slowly declining in Turkey.
The Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has vehemently claimed that the corruption investigations were an effort to undermine a democratically elected government, and none of the four ministers who resigned as a result of the Dec. 17 revelations have been brought to court. It took months for Parliament to establish a commission to investigate the allegations, and when it was finally formed, a government deputy proposed a ban on media coverage of the commission. Having followed these dramatic developments Abel says of Turkey, “It is not promising when even the media cannot talk about corruption.”

The West is worried about authoritarianism and cover-up of corruption

The perception of Turkey has deteriorated not just in terms of numbers and statistics, but also among policymakers, and even among longtime allies. Failure to deal with corruption is a sign of the increasing authoritarianism in Turkey. A senior fellow from the Washington, D.C., think tank the Center for American Progress (CAP), Dr. Michael Werz, told Today's Zaman, “Given that Turkey plummeted five points in Transparency International's recent corruption report, the issue continues to concern policymakers in Washington as well as in our European partner countries.” According to him, it is hard to imagine that the Turkish government will be able to regain its lost international standing without addressing this massive problem. Dr. Werz says that the US administration is currently reviewing its Turkey policy, primarily how to tackle the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), but also the current disagreements over Kobani, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), and Syria as well as issues such as press freedom, soft and hard censorship, government suppression of social media, new surveillance laws and frequent judicial interference. Werz says, “It all began with the Gezi protests, when the Turkish government pivoted decisively away from efforts to establish greater legitimacy through democratic reforms, thus weakening an important pillar of the US-Turkish partnership.”
Another Washingtonian, Dr. Ömer Taşpınar from the Brookings Institute has a similar evaluation. He says that in 2014 two issues determined the image of Turkey. First, there is the increasing level of corruption and authoritarianism. Taşpınar says that these two fed each other, since the manner of governing is becoming more authoritarian in order to cover up corruption. The second issue was the “fiasco over ISIS [also known as ISIL],” since a perception that Turkey prefers ISIL over the Kurds formed in the West.
According to Taşpınar, Erdoğan's image in the West is somewhere between Russian President Vladimir Putin, former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. “It surprises everyone that a leader who is more and more difficult to be taken seriously rules the country,” he comments, observing Turkey from the US capital.
The picture is not any better in Europe when it comes to the corrosive impact of the corruption investigation since Dec. 17, 2013. Renate Sommer, from the European People's Party (EPP) group in the European Parliament (EP) told Today's Zaman that she is “very concerned about judicial independence and impartiality, the separation of powers and the rule of law,” given the immediate intervention in the judiciary after Erdoğan's government faced corruption allegations. “I understand the government has not made many efforts to fully investigate the corruption allegations,” she commented, adding that the fight against corruption has de facto been stopped. She said that none of this is compatible with EU standards.
In a statement that illustrates how Turkey's EU commitment has come to a virtual halt due to the preoccupation of the government with the corruption allegations, Sommer said, “Considering these developments Erdogan's ‘New Turkey' is moving further away from EU standards than ever before.” According to her, as a candidate country Turkey should be committed to the Copenhagen political criteria, including the application of the rule of law and separation of powers.
When it comes to the arguments made by Erdoğan and the AK Party that Dec. 17 and 25 were coups against the government Sommer says, “I think that this is simply a diversionary tactic,” since by displacing the police and prosecutors Erdoğan “gave the impression that he was trying to cover up the corruption allegations.”

Greater corruption means less foreign investment

Corruption at home does not just have domestic implications. Turkey's score on the index reflecting the perception of corruption is significant because according to Abel, many business owners look at the CPI score before they invest in a country, based on a survey made by Dow Jones in February 2014.
Abel says that there is great interest in the news coming out of Turkey about corruption allegations, but recently all they hear about is restrictions on the media. Comparing Turkey with other EU candidates, Abel comments that Turkey does not give the impression that it is showing enough effort in the fight against corruption to become an EU member.
The drastic drop on the TI annual report of five points, amounting to 11 places on the list, indicates that the relative progress Turkey achieved in the last six years has been eroded.
According to Transparency International-Turkey Chair Oya Özarslan, what is critical in Turkey's corruption record is that there is no longer accountability for such charges. Noting that nobody has been brought before the court for the massive corruption allegations of the Dec. 17 and 25 investigations, Özarslan says that the perception of corruption within Turkey would change if people see that those who commit acts of corruption are punished. She referred to past corruption cases in Turkey, such as when former Prime Minister Mesut Yılmaz was tried by the Supreme Council and a former director of the İstanbul Waterworks Authority (İSKİ) was imprisoned for a corruption case that had a much smaller scope than the Dec. 17 and 25 investigations.
According to her, the problem lies in the fact that bribery is considered normal by the public, almost as an unofficial form of taxation. According to their 2013 survey, 21 percent of the people asked said that they bribe officials even for fundamental public services.
After stating that the collapse of proper due process is the main problem, Özarslan says that the December investigations created another major problem in Turkey: violations of democratic principles and human rights. She says just listing the series of developments since Dec. 17 in chronological order would demonstrate the grave situation in Turkey in terms of media freedom, restrictions on the Internet and intervention in the judiciary.

As far as the AK Party's argument that the corruption investigations were a coup against the government, Özarslan says that as long as there is no evidence of that, one cannot proceed simply based on those claims when the rule of law is being observed. She also notes that the investigations could have continued independently of such claims to prove that Dec. 17 was not about corruption, as the government claims.

For Özarslan, even the unprecedented changes to the Public Procurement Law are an indicator of corruption in Turkey. In the last 12 years, during the AK Party government, the law that regulates competition for public tenders has been changed 31 times, increasing the exceptional causes in the law and allowing for possible political manipulation. As Özarslan points out, some of the major construction projects such as the third bridge, the third airport in İstanbul and the İzmir highway are not subject to the law.
During the writing of this story, efforts to divert attention from government corruption accelerated in an unprecedented fashion. An anonymous Twitter user who goes by the name of Fuat Avni, who has made reliable predictions in the past, said that the government planned a crackdown against dissident media in Turkey on Dec. 12, primarily targeting the media group that includes Zaman and Today's Zaman. Avni then said that the operation had been delayed after word of the anticipated raid spread. Avni's subsequent announcement of their intentions soon came to pass when the police raided the Zaman building in the early hours of Dec. 14. Zaman Editor-in-Chief Ekrem Dumanlı and others were detained, further worsening Turkey's image in the world since the crackdown on the media is widely considered to be an attempt to punish those who refused to be silenced and continued to report on corruption. (Cihan/Today’s Zaman)